June 2009

June 30, 2009

It ought to be deeply satisfying for the victims of Bernie Madoff's staggeringly fraudulent Ponzi scheme that he has been sentenced to 150 years in prison. Even his billions could not have bought him a lifespan to outlast his prison term. In short Bernie Madoff will die a prisoner short of a miracle. As you know there are no miracles in this world.

There is justifiable jubilation among people across the United States that Madoff's comeuppance looks every bit as harrowing as life turned out to be for many of his devastated victims. The sentence is more exemplary than anything else and must be seen as a warning to those fraudsters who may still be plotting in our midst.

However, we also need to acknowledge that racketeers like Madoff are made possible primarily by the unbridled greed of those who invested in his "schemes." Those who invested in Madoff's promise should also bear at least some moral responsibility. I was struck by this particular passage in The New York Times: "I told the judge that when Bernard Madoff leaves prison, which means after his death, that he will then go down to the depths of hell where he'll join those other people who are in the mouths of Satan," Burt Ross, the former mayor of Fort Lee, N.J., who lost $5 million with Mr. Madoff, told the crowded press corps outside the courthouse."

While it is understandable that people want to multiply their money in the shortest possible time with the least amount of effort, we need to ask when is enough enough? If I had five million dollars after having been a mayor of a town, I would check myself in the mirror before I would rush to multiply that sum. This may be an old-fashioned view but five million dollars in cash is enough for anyone in the US to lead a greatly comfortable life until it comes to its natural end. I am quite sure Burt Ross would have been far less denunciatory had he cashed out well before Madoff swindled him out of his money.

June 26, 2009

It would have been naive to expect that Michael Jackson's death would prompt no questions or arouse no suspicions. The Los Angeles police have impounded a car belonging to Jackson's personal physician Conrad Robert Murray because it might have contained medications administered to the singer. The mere fact of the police impounding the car should not lead to any bizarre conspiracy theorizing but those who always look for more than there really is this is bonanza.

After all, why would an artist who led his entire life in full public view since his childhood have a normal death? That seems to be the guiding question behind those who suspect foul play. So far the police have not indicated any foul play saying there were no apparent signs of any trauma on his body.

The way I see it Michael Jackson is dead but he is more alive than he has been in the past decade at least.

It seems ridiculous to write about anything else on the day Michael Jackson died. The artist was beyond tribute. He has become folklore the instant he died. It is as if he was an illusion that lasted nearly four decades.

In the specific context of race relations, demolishing race barriers and erasing race consciousness, Jackson's contribution is as much as Dr. Martin Luther King. It is hard to remember that Jackson was über cool way before Barack Obama became that.

In some ways there is something eminently fitting about Jackson's unexpected exit. Although it is tradition to speak about premature death after those who die early by normal standards, no death is premature and in Jackson's case it concluded a fairytale life. As I said before it appears as if Jackson was an elaborate global apparition.

It seems somewhat presumptuous to write a tribute to someone about whom just about anyone can write and speak will have something to say. So I would spare you my thoughts beyond this.

June 24, 2009

The Indian government says it is determined to fix responsibility among those who "exaggerated" the tiger population in the Panna sanctuary in Madhya Pradesh. Ideally one would have applauded this statement but there is a minor problem. Here is why.

Those who are supposed to be in charge of such affairs had "exaggerated" the number of tigers to claim there were 30 of them in the sanctuary. The truth is there is none. Let me understand this one. By its very definition exaggeration means a willful overstatement of a number by some margin, which in turn means there were at least some tigers in existence. Exaggeration does not mean one can claim there was a particular number of tigers where there wasn't any. There is a word for that. It is called a lie.

A special investigating team set up by the National Tiger Conservation Authority concluded that the claims about the tiger population in Panna were wrong and the absence of the big cats can be attributed to poaching. India's junior minister for environment Jairam Ramesh said candidly: "Accountability would be fixed on the reason for the exaggerated projection of the tiger population and the reason for the effective population being zero."

Overstating numbers of wildlife on the verge of extinction is endemic not just across India but in South Asia as well. When those in charge of protecting tigers said there were 30 of them in Panna it could mean one or all of several things. It could mean they wished there were 30. It could mean there may be 30 or even perhaps just one. It could also mean a number they pulled out of either their own ass or a surviving tiger's ass. It could also mean they are merely saying a number that sounds plausible in case someone smart was actually monitoring such details.

My friend and colleague Tarun Basu’s dream of opening a
world-class media institute in India has come true. This comes at a time when
the print media around the globe is facing an existential crisis in the face of
uncertainties over which delivery model will prevail—the printed paper or the online
paper.

I received this press release from the International Center
for Journalists (ICFJ).

“The International Center for Journalists (ICFJ) has
announced the launch of the International Media Institute of India (IMII) in
New Delhi, a non-profit educational center that will marry cutting-edge,
hands-on journalism instruction with the highest international standards.

The institute will be run by ICFJ in collaboration with leading
Indian editors, who conceived the idea for the school when they experienced
difficulty in finding skilled entry-level journalists to hire. ICFJ’s partner
is the Society for Policy Studies (SPS), a non-profit Indian think tank that
promotes debate on contemporary issues among journalists and concerned citizens
and encourages quality journalism training.

Expected to open this fall, the one-year postgraduate
program will give entry-level journalists the professional and technical
expertise to work across media platforms. The classroom environment will mimic
a newsroom with students constantly reporting and publishing stories. Top-tier
international and Indian faculty will instruct the students on how to produce
quality journalism for print, interactive and broadcast outlets. The graduates
of the program will be the emerging leaders in media and communications.

The institute is funded by the John S. and James L. Knight
Foundation and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. The Graduate
School of Journalism of the City University of New York (CUNY) is providing
curriculum support.

The school is opening at a pivotal time. Indian media are
experiencing unprecedented growth as the economy goes global and literacy rates
rise. This has created a pressing need for journalists who can produce reliable
coverage of a country that has become a major global player.”

The school is indeed opening at a crucial time in India. The
country’s print and broadcast media has seen a perceptible decline in the
quality of professional journalists. The 24-news cycle that television news has
to follow has meant considerable lowering of entry barriers into this great
profession. Any imbecile with a microphone and a camcorder can masquerade as a
broadcast journalist these days. Television crews are everywhere in Delhi and
elsewhere waiting for just about anything resembling a human being coming out
of anything resembling a door to thrust their microphones into.

IMII appears to have what it takes to equip future
journalists with the skills and temperament so necessary to become a serious
journalist. I am sure those who have devised the curriculum know the importance
of reading for any aspiring journalists. I would encourage the school’s
director David Bloss and dean Sunil Saxena to drill into their students’ heads
that there is no alternative to reading, none whatsoever, if they want to
become journalists.

June 23, 2009

Two completely unrelated news stories, both cruel and tragic at the same time and both using mobile phones to devastating effects, have caught my attention.

In one story three young men have been arrested on the charges of raping many young women even while filming the crime and selling its video clips. In the second story a young bank worker harassed by his creditors, whom he owed Rs. 400,000 (about $9000) committed suicide. In the both the cases mobile phones were the tools of choice.

The suicide case in Ahmedabad is symptomatic of the stresses of urban living in a rapidly growing economy where aspirations often overwhelm people's financial capacities. Vasant Gohil, the 32-year-old bank employee, was pushed to the edge by money-lenders demanding repayment on a daily basis. It reached a level where Vasant decided to send his 28-year-old, eight-month pregnant wife Heena and their 11-year-old daughter Krishna to his in-laws before hanging himself from a ceiling fan. What struck me the most about the case, apart from its inherent tragedy, was the fact that Vasant sent out SMS's on his mobile to some 15 people before he took his life alerting them of the impending suicide. None of those to whom he sent the message was able to reach in time to save him.

The rape case is stunning in its sheer criminality, misogyny, cynicism and cold-bloodedness. Of the three suspects, Shahid Saiyad, Tariq Saiyad and Abu Bakr, Bakr comes across as the mastermind behind the whole sick scheme. He owns a mobile phone shop in the city of Surat and allegedly hatched the plot to make and sell the mobile video clips of the actual rape assaults. The depravity of the whole case is breathtaking. For a while I thought the fact that all the three suspects were Muslim men would ignite sectarian passions in a city where such violence always lurks under the surface. On the day they were arrested the suspects narrowly escaped being lynched by angry mobs. Mercifully, even Muslim organizations, particularly Muslim women, came out strongly against the crime and preempted it from acquiring a religious dimension.

June 22, 2009

In his interview with Anwar Iqbal of the Dawn newspaper President Barack Obama has taken a position on Kashmir that converges with what India has been saying for a long time. New Delhi has argued for over a decade and half that Islamabad should not make bilateral relations so conditioned upon the question of Kashmir that the two neighbors do not make any progress on other issues. Islamabad has generally rejected this approach on the ground that since Kashmir is central to the hostilities between the two, they should attempt to resolve that first.

India's has been the more pragmatic approach of the two although it is understandable if Pakistan see that as a ruse to scale down Kashmir's importance. On the other hand Pakistan's approach has been more ideological and even doctrinaire.

Here is what Obama told Iqbal.

'And I believe that there are opportunities, maybe not starting with Kashmir but starting with other issues, that Pakistan and India can be in a dialogue together and over time to try to reduce tensions and find areas of common interest,' he said.

'And we want to be helpful in that process, but I don't think it's appropriate for us to be the mediators in that process. I think that this is something that the Pakistanis and Indians can take leadership on.'

It is almost as if the response was written by some bureaucrat in India's Ministry of External Affairs. There is merit in the argument that bilateral relations between India and Pakistan can remain frozen in the uncertainties over Kashmir. We have tried using Kashmir as the core component of any bilateral exchange for decades but have not gotten too far. It may be time to try a fresh approach which attempts to build bridges over other less acrimonious issues in order to create an atmosphere which might then lead progress on Kashmir. In this context it is important to remember that India too has taken an unyielding stand on making resumption of a dialogue conditioned upon verifiable and tangible steps by Pakistan to prevent Islamist terror groups from using Pakistani soil and tacit support to launch attacks in India.

Pakistan's response to the November 26, 2008 strikes on Mumbai have become the pivot around which India wants to decide whether there is any sense in engaging Pakistan in a broader discussion. While it is absolutely essential that Pakistan comes up with a satisfactory response on the Mumbai terror attacks, it would equally be a mistake to make resumption of a dialogue conditioned upon that.

June 20, 2009

Nothing makes the media more excited than developments which they can distil down to neat little labels. What labels do is help the media bypass the tedium of taking a more vigorous and more analytical look at complex social, cultural, political, religious and economic situations. Labeling any kind of unrest is particularly prevalent in India's broadcast media.

As I watch the country's security forces battle the growing threat from the "Maoist" groups in states such as West Bengal and Chhatisgarh, I am struck by how eager the media is to somehow reduce the enormously important question of economic and social inequities to a label. The current violence in Lalgarh, a predominantly tribal region in the state ruled by the communists, is an unsettling example of how the dispossessed and the disenfranchised will eventually resort to extreme measures to draw the country's attention to their existential crises.

Not having spent enough time on this particular region's problems, it would be glib of me to write about the specific provocations that eventually led to the ongoing stand-off between the government and who feel seriously wronged by it. However, one can say with a fair degree of confidence that at the heart of any such unrest or movement in India there is invariably decades of apathy and neglect of vast populations of people at the bottom of the pyramid.

One of the popular recurring themes among sociologists studying India's socio-economic imbalances to explain why the country was uniquely immune to a violent revolution or a civil war went something like this. Indians at all levels, particularly at the or near the bottom of the pyramid, have this deeply ingrained sense of fatalism and philosophical resolve to accept their station in life. To put it in less esoteric terms, what many sociologists were saying was the have-nots would not hit at the haves simply because they had resigned to their own miseries as part of some uniquely Indian acceptance of whatever life handed them.

While there may have been something to that rather patronizing theorizing, I believe what we are witnessing now could seriously shatter that comfortable and reassuring view.

Ustad Ali Akbar Khan's demise brings back memories of my only meeting with him at San Anselmo, California in 2001. He was already close to 80 by then and had nothing left to prove his manifest musical genius. My interview was for a television series that I was working on but could not complete.

Khan had the anchored demeanor of all great artists, particularly musicians. Even if I discounted the leisurely, almost contemplative demeanor that comes with old age, Khan had a remarkably measured pace about him. I was aware of his reputation as someone bereft of the exhibitionism of his equally illustrious brother-in-law Ravi Shankar but not quite sure the extent of it. If you met him on a stroll on the leafy lanes of San Anselmo you would not suspect a single musical note in his body language.

I was told by those who know much more about Indian classical music in general and Khan's brilliance in particular had told me to ask him to play just one note on his sarod. They told me Khan's single had more depth than what many lesser musicians in the genre had in their entire career. I told him about that reputation and almost made him cringe with embarrassment. Yielding to my persistence that comes with being an ignoramus, Khan did precisely that. That note still resonates in my mind.

Khan reminded me of another legendary Khan I had met in 1993 in Faislabad in Pakistan. Divine qawwal Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan had a similar demeanor. More about the two Khans later.